A Stir in the Wind Chimes
by BUKU
Summary: Molly is fourteen and the only daughter of a big family. When tragedy strikes Big Horn Farm, she is forced into a life she hates herself for wanting. RATED M for gore, violence, angst, and romance.
1. Prologue

Prologue

Looking back, she would have _definitely_ smacked herself round the back of the head at several points as she grew up.

She groaned, pinching the bridge if her delicate nose in mortification as yet another image of her appeared on the screen.

_Especially_ for that, thanks for bringing it up.

The reporter across from her chuckled at her reaction, but kindly; everyone made mistakes as they grew up, he assured her. That was part of it, she knew, but it still didn't make it any less embarrassing.

Oh! And that haircut!

"Hey!" An indignant voice called from the kitchen, catching the look on her face. "I liked your haircut."

She 'paused' the show briefly to stick her tongue out at him. He shook his head mutely with a grin.

"Oh to be young and naive once more..." She replied mock-dreamily.

Pressing 'play' again in time to hear the reporter laugh again, she pet the passing hide of a cheerful young fawn as it skipped around the soft armchair in which she sat.

The woman leaned back in her chair; 'pausing' once again as a picture of a young creature of fifteen flashed up on the screen- 'wild-eyed and lost' was the caption.

Yes. She was lost for a long time.

She had been a spitfire when she was younger, all over the papers and magazine covers and _news _for her antics and reckless abandon.

Now she was reported on for a different reason; she was dangerous.

But, then again, anyone who had been what she and her pokemon had been through would be.

"You'll get vain if you keep watching that!" He warned, leaning down to kiss her cheek. On the stove a saucepan bubbled.

"Oh to be young and naive once more..."

Indeed.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One

All children are irritating, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Molly prided herself on being utterly, irrevocably, intentionally annoying all of the time; to her brothers, to her mother, to the farm hands... everyone. By singing stupid, nonsensical rubbish that they had to listen to because she was too fast to catch.

Her dad, on the other hand, was too brilliant to ever utter a word around that wasn't absolutely wonderful and bursting with amazement.

Children are odd.

Molly wasn't the strangest by any stretch; she was just amused when people tried to ignore her.

She was too noticeable for that.

Not that she had any sort of defect, or weird growths that looked like horns coming out of her eyes, or something. But maybe that was why she acted up. She was, after all, fairly normal; straight, dark brown hair, a pretty face with a petite nose and pretty big brown eyes, small for a thirteen-year-old, and petite.

If anything, she had _reason_ to be looked at.

Stuff just happened that way, Molly guessed; people tried to ignore things even more if they wanted to look at them. She was probably the greatest thing in the world and they were just too stubborn to look.

Her mother called her stubborn all the time, but Molly knew she didn't know what it meant, so she let it slide. After all, her dad told her to.

Life at the Big Horn Farm was boring in the weeks leading from winter to spring, because the tourists were all somewhere else. As she was the only decent person around, Molly got bored and thus her regime of annoying everyone intensified. Her mother said she was getting itchy feet, but Molly didn't know what that meant, so she and her dad shared an '_Oh, mum'_ look before carrying on with what they were doing.

Molly didn't dislike her mother; she was just closer to her father.

Her brothers- all older- were another matter entirely. She really didn't like them; sometimes borderline hated. She didn't like their attitudes towards everything, or their constant flirting with female tourists or their constant riding of the animals _when she wasn't allowed._

Another thing that annoyed her about her brothers was the fact that they were lazy.

Not once did they _ever _even attempt to go out travelling with their pokemon. The only one that ever went past the fork in the road was Devin, the idiot; he went past there to market with his Tauros sometimes.

If it were her, Molly would go and never come back!

Well... that was a lie... she'd miss her dad and the pokemon too much. After all, who would look after the Stantler properly? Not Chris or Brendan, that was for sure. And a new clutch of eggs had just been hatched, so it was doubly important that she be there to supervise.

Though, her birthday had passed last week and she'd been disappointed that she'd not gotten a pokemon. Her dad hadn't promised, or anything, but he kind of looked as if he might... for a starter or something. She wouldn't run away or anything! It would just be nice...

Her mother called Chris and Devin and Molly looked around from watching the Stantler play, dazed as to how she'd gotten there through her rambling.

Her mother, Laura - but whose nickname was Lenny- had a strained expression on her face. She was a pleasant-faced woman, with an air of authority around her, but when she spoke Molly just thought she sounded all arty and stupid.

Watching her brothers turn and see Laura's expression was interesting. Chris and Devin were the closest in age, at twenty and twenty-two, so they spent a lot of time working together. Brendan was always the one that worked by himself, but he was the one that tolerated Molly the most, despite being only eighteen and doing the whole brooding teenager thing that her father told Molly about with a chuckle. Molly had no idea, but the look Chris and Devin shared, so similar to the dark looks that Brendan usually wore, made something stir in her throat, making her gulp and shiver. Chris and Devin never really got angry, just annoyed.

They looked weird to Molly.

It frightened her, so she quickly turned back to look at the foals with a forced air of content, leaning her elbows nonchalantly on the fence.

Children are naive and quite happy in that, but Molly found herself to be growing up and becoming _observant_to a new degree; she noticed things she never would have before. Like how as they reached her, Laura's jaw tightened and her eyes hardened.

How could Molly see that from so far away? Why was she looking so _hard_?

She was worried, and the snuffling of a Stantler at her arm was making her introspective; as the almost-psychics were prone to do before they grew up.

She looked back down at the Stantler with its wide, innocent eyes.

Molly didn't want to grow up, she frowned to herself.

If she had to make faces like her brothers', she wanted to stay a child forever and never leave the farm.

Dinner was a loud affair normally at Molly's house; the farmhands and her brothers were ravenous, always. They shuffled food, laughed, boomed jokes, and were generally jovial and rude and endearing, to Molly anyway. Though, she would never admit it. Dinner was also the main time she'd see her parents together; her father would kiss her mother's forehead and hold her hand gently in his own, oblivious to the noisy trumpeting around them from the farmhands. Molly often just ate her dinner, occasionally holding a new adopted Pidgey or Rattata or Starly in her lap as a suggestion to her father.

Tonight, the farmhands were gone, her brothers, too.

She sat in silence with her mother and father at a table too big for three, and heard herself think too loudly for a thirteen-year-old.

She silenced it with words like, 'idiot', 'stupid', and 'shut up!'

Molly was quite a stubborn person when she wanted to be. So when her brothers tumbled through the door with a pokemon carcass in their arms, she refused to let it disrupt her normality.

She continued to eat, and ignored them, her fist shaking at her side.

"They killed a buck," Chris sighed.

There was silence, only Molly's fork scraping the plate.

"They left years ago!" Molly's father, Ben, sounded weary and, Molly's breath hitched, close to tears?

Devin swiped a hand through his mottled brown hair as Chris and Brendan heaved the carcass onto the grass outside.

"Well, _someone_ had to have been there, because it wasn't _nobody_ that shot at Brendan."

Molly scraped her fork harshly against her plate by accident and made that seemed to spur everyone into action.

"Molly, go to the Stantler shed, "Ben said, standing and giving the boys a meaningful glance. When she didn't move, he barked, "Now!"

The Stantler shed wasn't a shed at all, but a smaller barn where the integrated herd stayed together at night. Molly, when she had been scared of the bogey man, had come out into the Stantler shed and slept beside the herd instead of her parents.

She regretted it now, and it scared her because she didn't know why.

They greeted her like pets whenever she came to visit them, so she felt bad when she was less than enthusiastic about seeing them.

She was distracted.

There were clumps of forest area all around the Farm, and her parents owned all of it, so they let the pokemon roam there during the day sometimes, unrestrained. But as she had walked over to the shed, Molly had seen movements... big movements and the flicker of a light, far out in the forests.

So now the herd lay in the dark all about her, and she felt safe.

Stantler, her father said, had excellent sight and night vision from their natural habitats; within the dark centres of forests. Also, when threatened, their antlers glow. Well, they used to. Now, with the tourists, the Big Horn herd had adapted to people and didn't feel the need for warning.

Nevertheless, Molly's eyes never left the silhouette that was the herd's stag, Carfex, comfortably positioned with his thick, strong legs beneath his deep chest.

He was a big buck of a Stantler, standing a huge six foot without his antlers, which were thick and bulky.

If Carfex lit his horns ... Molly thought she might just cry.

He slowly turned his massive maw to look at her, and she saw the glint of... _something_ in his eye as he looked at her.

What did he think of her, the puny little girl that gave them meal every day?

There was a rustle, or there must have been a noise, because Carfex's huge head swung back to stare at the shed doors. As always, Molly had merely put the wooden latch down, since her father said it was dangerous to leave them completely trapped, even if they were Pokemon, because they could get hurt. She felt every pair of eyes around her staring at the latch, straining _something_ against it.

The weight of something that wasn't _quite_ there pulsed past her and out to what was behind the shed doors.

It was silent and invisible but she knew that the Stantler had just done something to save them all.

She _felt_ it; the indecision from behind the doors. The Stantler were all silent, even the young knew unconsciously to stay mute.

It was instinct.

Molly was awed.

Even she heard the footsteps as they backpedalled from the Stantler shed, and she felt part of the herd, as if she was somehow contributing to the effort.

She felt _magical_ and dwelled in it for what seemed like a lifetime.

And then the screams began.

Her mother screamed first; Laura, Lenny, Mom, Mommy, Idiot, Arty, Stupid, Mom, and Mother.

She was horrified she could tell who it was that was screaming.

But she stayed silent with the herd.

It was instinct.

Brendan, her brother, the closest person she had after her father.

Molly almost choked on a breath when she heard a laugh. It was deep and cheerful, and nothing evil. But it was laughter, as her family screamed... so it couldn't be good.

Later, she would try to ruin herself for thinking like this as her family died.

Yet, they still died.

Her two older brothers didn't scream merely hurled obscenities. But her father let out the most mournful yell Molly had ever heard or would ever hear, and Molly could imagine him.

It would be upon finding her mother, and it would destroy him. First his legs would shake, she gasped quietly, then his knees would buckle, and the tears would come. He would tear and then-

The scream of a dying man tore into Molly and she stifled herself.

It was then that the herd began to stand. She didn't understand then.

Maybe they were going to save her family, like they saved her?

Carfex would go in and destroy and tear and slice and slay and slaughter-

She was being jostled forward by soft antler nudging.

They wanted her to open the latch.

She could do that.

The rectangle of wood always stuck when it was cold out at night, so she had to shimmy it a little, she remembered.

After that, Carfex scooped her up and the stampede began.

The herd, a mighty thunder of hooves, stormed forth from the shed impressively with Carfex at their head, a small bundle upon his back, before they disappeared into the forests and away.

Molly, however, was the bundle and watched her home disappear, her family on fire like a flare of her life. It was an awful construction, like a massive bonfire, and they were tied up to it altogether.

Her mother's face was a tangle of shreds, blackening from the fire.

Her brothers, Brendan still screaming, watched the herd disappear in melancholy.

Her father, Ben, was sobbing openly, staring at Laura's face with such heartbreak that Molly cried out a little for him, before the shadows took the herd into its safety.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"By morning the forest was alight, and the officials appeared."

"How did you know?" The interviewer is a man in his late twenties.

"How? Well, we were in it."

* * *

The herd had come to settle in one of the great, unnamed forests of Johto, resting after a night of human horror. Their burden, the small child, was a dead weight on the back of their leader, but had yet to give away their position and was, therefore, tolerated.

Carfex tended her as if she were a fawn as she sobbed silently. The stantler herd huddled as a giant being, keeping warm under the canopy of the sparse, dying woodland and, therefore, beneath what would provid the tinder for the remnants of the flames at their previous home. The crackling reached the ears of a flighty young doe first, who called out to Carfex who, in turn, gave the silent order for movement.

Dimly Molly remembered what her father had told her once; Carfex was once wild, and not bred in captivity like many of the Pokemon with them at the Big Horn. He had experienced wild life and Molly, in years to come, would pledge that she was only saved because of the stantler buck's knowledge and strength.

Atop a slanted peak, and from the muscled back of Carfex, Molly could see the far off smoke that was sure to be the grisly remains of her family, nearly hidden by the roaring inferno the dying forest had become below them from their spot on a rocky overhang.

Her hands felts sticky and, looking at them, she realised she was covered in soot.

Do people make soot? Or ash?

Abruptly, her dinner voided itself, splattering down onto the rocky ground ahead of her fall as she collapsed off of the stoic stantler. Her hands shook, and her face was streaked with clear tears in the black of the fires on her skin, and hot-cold sweat.

Far off Molly heard the rare howls of police cars and ambulances.

_You're too late_, she thought numbly, slapping a limp paw across her mouth to rub away the spittle. _Everyone's gone._

She collapsed in a heap of brittle bone and the stantler herd made a decision silently around her; they would return her to humans, and live wild.

Molly was unconscious when Carfex walked into the Pokemon Centre with her that evening. A bright human with a soft aura approached and received her gently, and so the stantler buck left, never to meet the young human fawn again.

* * *

That morning, Kirby and Talun Kale sat in the Poke'Center canteen, scarfing down huge bowls of leftover chilli, salsa and chips.

"Man, you guys do awesome chilli," Talun burped, wiping a long, orange streak onto the back of his hand with his mouth. Helen, the jovial cook of the National Park Centre, beamed and chuckled, wiping down the counters. For the past week the brother and sister team had been staying at the centre while Kirby waited for her trainer's license to be renewed for Johto. From what Helen could make out, it was not a rare occurrence for Kirby to be a little forgetful.

So, for the time-being, the Kanto kids had been living in the back quarters with Helen and Nurse Joy, seeing as the National Park Centre saw little to no attention and that meant no extra beds. But that didn't mean they'd turn away trainers in need! Without her license, Kirby couldn't legally travel in Johto, after all.

Helen fixed an eye on the pair. They looked nothing alike- what with being fraternal twins and all- so where Kirby was tall for a woman with long auburn hair, pale skin and dark green eyes, Talun was all dark with alabaster skin; honey brown eyes and jet black hair, standing the same height as Kirby.

To the fore of the room, erected high in one corner, was a TV that seemed to have caught Kirby's attention.

"Oi, what-" Talun began, but she shushed him in frustration, abandoning her half-eaten chilli and reaching to turn the volume on the TV up.

"I think we've been told," Helen winked at Talun and went back to cleaning. He grinned back, but the words caught him.

"…clues at the scene point to a deliberate attack on the Big Horn Farm on Rout 32. We can either assume rustlers, as all Pokemon were gone from the property, or someone escaped with the Pokemon. We urge them to come forward with any information they may have." The image was of a stern police officer, and the caption beneath him read 'Deputy Maywick- Horror at Big Horn.'

The footage cut back to a flashy studio and the sad visage of a pretty blonde woman.

"We will now be showing footage that some viewers may find disturbing." The video file was shaky cam, obviously from an officer or someone first on the scene. A bleeped out curse is heard, and the person holding the camera throws up. Suddenly the camera is wrenched from the person's hand and focused on what must have prompted the original cameraman's sickness; what looks at first to be merely a bonfire has faces. At the foot of a pyre are the half-gone remains of an old man whose throat had been cut, the knife still resting in one puckered, blistered hand.

Kirby gasps sharply, throwing both hands over her mouth and staggering back to sit on the floor with a thump.

"Who could do something like that?" Talun says to himself, but Helen answers.

"I don't know, but I reckon we have someone here that knows."

In answer to their horrified, searching looks the howl of a police car pulling up outside tore through the pleasant, unassuming morning air.

* * *

The sunlight was blinding. She much preferred the cloying dark of unconsciousness.

The bitter taste of something in her mouth as she woke was an unpleasant reminder that she was alive and her family was not.

"Are you thirsty?" The voice was soft and warm, and Molly wanted to hate it.

"N-" her throat seized on her protest and her body wracked itself with a coughing fit.

The nurse launched forward and held onto her, smoothing the back of her patient gown gently, pausing only to lift a straw connected to a glass of water to her lips.

"Please?" The woman's reassuring smile breaks Molly and she accepts, wanting to just curl up in this siren's embrace, but instead merely accepting the straw and sipping a little. "Great! How are you feeling?"

"_Do you even know anything_?!" It comes out as more of a snarl than she intended, but she doesn't care. "Do you?"

The nurse looks at her with large, compassionate eyes and Molly frowns, looking away in disgust.

There is a knock on the door and Molly just wants this to end.

"Ah! Right on time," the nurse, Joy on her name tag, smiles. "I might not know, but Officer Jenny might."

She opens the door for a severe looking woman with dark hair and a badge. She sizes Molly up and then, without asking, assumes Joy's spot beside the bed in a soft-looking, pale green chair.

"Are you Molly? Molly Horn?" Her eyes are sharp as a fearow's.

She wants to fight and run, just so she can die, but right now she's tired and Joy is looking at her like she wants to help, so instead of her usual '_who wants to know?' _she just nods.

Jenny's demeanour changes instantly. She leans forward and pulls Molly into a firm, warm hug and Joy gasps a little in the background.

"I am so sorry this happened to you," Jenny is whispering in her ear, and it's soothing to hear her rage. "I promise we will find whoever did it. I swear to you."

She pulls back, holding Molly Horn at arms length for a moment of resolution before nodding swiftly and rising. She reaches into a back pocket and produces a small amber box.

It's charred, and has obviously been soldered and broken open on her behalf. On its lid was her name.

"This was one of the only things recovered- and it's a good thing we found it, too! It was the only Pokemon left that couldn't escape."

"Pokemon?" Molly croaked, holding onto her throat as the itch of smoke in her throat rose again.

"There looked to be paper inside, but somehow it was destroyed," Jenny looked apologetic. "I just hope your Pokemon is okay."

Her family was dead, her whole life was gone to the wind with the stantler herd, and now all of a sudden she was being handed a Pokemon which was likely hidden in her parents destroyed farm.

Molly held the still-warm pokeball to her chest for a moment before pressing the release, hoping in her heart of hearts that she had never asked for this to happen with all of her sulking over Pokemon at the dinner table.

Life's way of saying, _This was the only way_. Molly hated herself.

The white light expanded and constructed a shape, then shrank. It pranced, gambolled and kicked in play for a few moments before spotting Molly and warily climbing up onto her hospital bed with her. It was a male, very very young and wide-eyed.

She would know; Molly had hatched the bouffalant herself the day before as a new Unova attraction.

"Recognise me?" she gave it a watery smile, and the young Pokemon keened sadly at her. She stroked through the small, soft brown curls at the base of his neck. Until he was full-grown he would never have the full coat.

This was easier, calmer. The bouffalant was a welcome distraction.

Molly wondered if it knew her parents were dead.

* * *

Hello! This formatting business is so difficult on here! Hope you're enjoying so far! Let me know if you'd like me to continue :D


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